


in an instant; all at once

by elliexer



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Confessions, Domestic Fluff, Drinking, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Grooming, Healing, I've never read the book so bare with me i'm doing my absolute best here, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multi, Period Typical Homophobia, Pining, RICHIE TOZIER SMOKES WEED, Roommates, Sexual Assault, Slow Burn, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Yearning, canon typical homophobia, i mean it when i say theres a lot of internalized homophobia and sexual assault talk, so please be careful while reading i'll have tw on every chapter if need be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22235887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliexer/pseuds/elliexer
Summary: “Friends…” Eddie whispers, and Richie refuses to let himself hear the hurt in Eddie’s voice as he says it. Refuses to even acknowledge it because Richie has convinced himself, very well at this point may he add, that these things he hears when he talks to Eddie, even as kids, were all a figment of his imagination. His wild, gay boy brain trying and failing to make his fucked up thoughts a reality.Or, how Richie and Eddie stop smoking.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	1. richie knows how to quit

**Author's Note:**

> **tw: suicidal idealization, attempt, anxiety/panic attack, smoking & drug use**
> 
> Hi there! Um, I don't know what to say here. It's been like... *looks at watch* four years since I last wrote a fic? And it was Undertale?! Whack. Anyway, the pining never stops here y'all and I want you all to get ready for this mess I wrote while manic over Christmas break. 50k words and still going. If you're looking for a slow burn with pining and yearning and internalized homophobia and fear but with a happy ending... then boy do I have the fic for you. Guilt? Shame? Intrigue? All here. All you have to do is read it.
> 
> I plan to upload a new chapter every other Sunday, hopefully. This should take me right up until the end of my semester, meaning I'll have a sweet, sexy backlog to work from by the time I'm done classes and should be able to upload every weekend until I'm done. Aaaaanyway, lets get to the stuff you're all really waiting for. 
> 
> Rating is M for right now, I'm going to let the fic write itself and if it wants to be explicit, I'll update accordingly once that happens, but for now shit will just be heavily implied. 
> 
> No spoilers but one of our boys here endures some heavy grooming, I touch on it pretty explicitly but I wont ever write out any of these scenes past hinting at what happened. I don't want this to be that kind of fic but it's important for his characterization here that I include it. Um, canon-typical abuse all that jazz, lots of internalized homophobia, straight outta my own idiot head. I don't want to use too many slurs but again, it might come up. I'll make sure to leave a warning if it does. 
> 
> Without further adieu, here's chapter one! Enjoy, comment below if you want! And thank you so much for reading!

Richie knows how to quit. He knows how to stop willfully poisoning himself. In fact, he’s a pro at this point. A gold medalist. He’d quit ten times already. Maybe he’s a little rusty now, it had been a year and a half since the last time he had tried. It had been right around the time his big tour was starting, and he was beginning to get winded during soundchecks. He knew he had to stop, so he just quit cold turkey a month or so before the first show. Then, of course, he lit one up right after he got off stage. 

He inhales straight cancer into his lungs and the pleasant, familiar burn and the rush of adrenaline in his brain make him question the desire to stop. He isn’t scared of dying. He’s not scared of being sick. Not of suffering, or losing a lung, or even a hole in his throat. 

He’s scared of how all these things would affect a certain someone in his life named Eddie. 

With something akin to disgust flipping around in his stomach like a parasite, he takes another long drag before lighting his fifth in a row with the butt of the fourth. Inhales. Holds too long, exhales.

It had been eight months since Richie Tozier went back home. Eight months since he, alongside most of his friends, defeated a space alien monster and confronted their fears. Eight months since he had seen his friends in person, held them, spoken to them for real. Richie feels empty. They all still talk, share moments from their busy lives together but, meeting up is impossible. Their schedules are too hectic, their lives too adult. They had missed out on the good parts of adulthood. The parts where you could still pretend, even if completely in vain, that you’d never grow up. 

They couldn’t go out and get black out drunk on Friday nights because some of them worked weekends. They couldn’t snort coke off bathroom counters because they were forty fucking years old and Richie could barely smoke weed anymore without passing out. The shit relaxed him too much anymore. He was too fucking old. 

Eddie is still married and Richie talks to him least of all. 

He lights another smoke, taking a long drag until it physically hurts to hold it all in, exhaling through his nose, eyes burning as he squeezes them shut. 

No one forgot anything this time. Richie remembers the fear as they’d all parted ways eight months ago. The collection of numbers, the exchanging of information, the creation of group chats. And they talk constantly now, everyday he wakes up to a new message either directly or through the group chat. And this time everyone remembers everything. Every last detail about their lives, no more blurry, white static when they thought of their childhoods. No more palatable fear with no direct motivation behind these empty memories, no inkling of trauma induced amnesia, or perhaps of paranormal, extraterrestrial mind games. Richie wishes he didn’t remember. 

He wishes he didn’t wake up every morning still feeling nothing but apathy for the world around him. He wishes he could feel anything at all but it’s like his glasses have a filter on them, making the world greyscale. It’s like a fucking rain cloud is hanging over his head like some ridiculous Looney Tunes character, or fucking Eeyore from Pooh Bear. Maybe if he just finds his tail and sticks it up his ass he’ll feel something again. 

He looks up toward the twinkling of stars that blanket the LA sky, and he can’t help but feel pathetic and small. Once he closes his patio door and comes back inside, realizing he’d smoked his entire pack, he crashes on the couch and eyes the bong on his table. He feels like he’s lived in his teenaged bedroom his whole fucking life. Posters of movies on the wall with half naked women, string lights, a boombox in the corner, and milk crates holding albums he couldn’t even play anymore because his record player was broken and he couldn’t be fucked to fix it. Richie pulls his glasses off, throwing them onto the coffee table as he rubs his eyes, sitting up to take a swig of the half empty, lukewarm Bud on the scratched up, wooden table. 

He grimaces, but finishes it off easily, slamming it down with a grunt of disgust. He needed to start using his Big Dick Boy Comedian money to get better beer, this was just straight up pathetic. 

Richie looks around his bachelor pad eyeing the furniture, the paint, the life he’d built up for himself. The picture of domesticity it is not. It quite literally looks like a frat house. Not really the type of interior decorating one might expect of a home in Beverly Hills. There are two bedrooms, his and a guest room. A spare room he uses as an office, open concept kitchen and living room leading to a mudroom in the back that led out to his patio, a closed yard, and a pool complete with a hot tub. Ensuite bathroom on both bedrooms, and one upstairs immediately to the left. Laundry in the mudroom. It was a decent house. Beautiful view, spacious. That’s what his realtor said. It cost a fucking fortune, and yet despite all his shit and all the years he’d lived there, it still felt like it wasn’t his. It felt lonely. Empty, despite the clutter. Richie felt the same about himself. 

He had a phone full of pictures from his friends. Group chats full of messages, Snapchat score near a million and one and yet still, something was missing. He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t touch them or hold them or ask them how their days were in person and most of all he couldn’t do that to Eddie or Stan. Especially Stan. Richie inhaled sharply, jumping off the sofa to go to the kitchen for another beer. Nope. He couldn’t think about Stan right now. Absolutely not. 

Richie flicks the cap off the bottle and takes a swig, making his way upstairs to his office, intent on distracting himself until he fell asleep. He practices the routines he’s been sent through e-mail from his team of writers, hand picked by his manager, of course. He performs in LA’s most notorious clubs to the applause of hundreds of people. He even had a stand-up special in post production, nearly ready to go live on Netflix, just in time for his next tour to be announced. By all accounts, Richie knows he should be living it up. He knows he shouldn’t be at home lighting a bowl at 3:45 in the morning all by himself listening to fucking god knows what play in the background. 

He sighs, falling back against the sofa where he found himself again as he exhales a cloud of smoke, closing his eyes and thinking quietly to himself before the images playing on his eyelids become too much to handle. 

Richie spends the night of the premiere in a weed and alcohol induced fog at his managers house, talking about everything and nothing at all.

He can’t make heads or tails of the things he’s saying but, he hears people laughing, he feels women touch him on the arm, and flip their hair over their shoulders. He sees them bite their lips, sees their shiny, Beverly Hills legs poke out beneath the hems of their little black dresses and he thinks, this is how I’m supposed to feel about this. Woman plus man equals sex. Woman sees man which equals sex. Man sees woman which must equal sex. He should feel elated when he’s pressed against the wall and tastes balmy lipstick on his teeth. He should feel like a man when she drags him by the tie, down the hall and up the steps of his home after they make it there. He should feel everything but the empty, dreadful pit in his stomach when she zips off her dress and crawls in next to him to bite at his throat like a lioness hunting prey. 

But he can’t. Richie feels nothing but anxious. Dismayed. Unwanting. But he doesn’t blame her, and he tells himself that she’s just not the one. That he just needs to be more open. That he’s just self-conscious. Worried what she might think of him, and he always shrivels under their gazes, telling himself that this was the cause. Because the truth was much scarier. The truth he couldn’t fix with motivational quotes and exercise. The truth was a nasty, disgusting thing that had latched itself onto him when he was too little to shake it off and now, years later, he lay in bed after the deed had been done, and he smokes a cigarette for the billionth time. 

The only difference now is that he doesn’t wonder what’s wrong with him. He knows it. He doesn’t wonder how to fix it. He knows he can’t. All he wonders now is can he get over it? Can he move on? And if not… well. He wonders how long he’ll last. 

. . .

Richie thought things would get better once they killed that fucking clown– sent it back to hell where it belonged. But Richie simply feels empty. He wonders briefly sometimes if he might benefit from therapy. Talk to some shrink like a crazy person once a week and maybe his brain will get better. But every time the thought comes up, the clink of ice in his glass of scotch brings him back to reality. 

Therapy can only truly help if you tell the whole truth, otherwise you’re just getting scammed. Patient confidentiality is a thing up to a very fine point. Telling some old quack about how he’d killed a dude and defeated an evil space clown would put Richie in jail at best. At worst, he’d be fucking institutionalized. Just what he didn’t need. A trip to the crazy house. 

So instead, he made his way through the days in a haze of smoke and tar, eating away at him like infection, necrosing him slowly from the inside out. This all culminated of course. An hour before the biggest show of his career, possibly his life, he found himself in his dressing room, surrounded by frosted spheres of light and mirrors like the silverscreen American darling he was at heart, one swallow away from getting his stomach pumped. Or, more preferably, ending all of this bullshit once and for all. All he had to do was bring his hand to his mouth, palm full of chalky pills. He thinks it’s Xanax but to be quite honest it could be fucking anything. 

He’s high, he’s drunk already, and he’s already smoked half of the pack he bought today and still he doesn’t have the fucking balls to just bring his stupid fucking hand to his mouth and swallow and be done with it. By the time anyone noticed he wasn’t coming out of his dressing room he’d be dead already and he’d never have to deal with this shit again. None of it. He’d never have to feel guilty for laughing. He’d never have to feel disgusted at himself for being such a slob. He’d never have to worry about how badly he’d ruin everything around him if he even, for one second, made it too obvious that the closet was becoming claustrophobic. 

If he just swallowed, if he just fucking found the bravery and courage to do it, all of the fear would be over with. 

Ding.

Ding. Ding. 

DingDingDingDingDing.

Ding.

Richie blinks himself back to reality, bleary eyed for a moment before he looks down at his phone. It’s going crazy on the table in front of him and he almost has half a mind to turn it off and ignore it until he focuses in and reads. 

**7:02 PM | Eddie:** Hey, Richie?  
**7:02 PM | Eddie:** I really don’t want to bug you right now. I know you’re getting ready for the show.  
**7:02 PM | Eddie:** Your show.  
**7:03 PM | Eddie:** Good luck by the way.  
**7:03 PM | Eddie:** Break a leg.  
**7:03 PM | Eddie:** Do they say that outside of theater?  
**7:03 PM | Eddie:** Sorry. Nevermind.  
**7:03 PM | Eddie:** I need to talk to you. It’s important.  
**7:04 PM | Eddie:** I don’t think I can be alone right now

It’s Eddie. It’s Eddie and he’s not okay.

The pills fall from Richie’s hand as he lurches forward to grab his phone, unlocking it and immediately texting Eddie back. 

**7:05 PM | Richie:** hey eddie!!!!!  
**7:05 PM | Richie:** hey wats going on  
**7:05 PM | Richie:** is everything okay????  
**7:05 PM | Richie:** :-(

**7:06 PM | Eddie:** I don’t know.  
**7:06 PM | Eddie:** I just… I don’t know.

**7:06 PM | Richie:** i have time can i call?

**7:07 PM | Eddie:** yeah…. please?

**7:07 PM | Richie:** okay<3

Richie’s breath catches. He’d always been a very avid user of emoticons and these new fangled emojis but, he rarely sent hearts to his friends. He hoped Eddie didn’t read into it. God he hoped he didn’t. 

Richie sits there nearly two minutes straight worrying about being too obvious before he remembers, oh fuck, he was going to call Eddie. On the phone. And Eddie didn’t want to be alone right now, and he’d straight up just left him alone. Richie unlocks his phone in a flurry, quickly pulling up Eddie’s number and calling him. The other man picks up almost immediately. 

“Richie?” he asks. His voice sounds raw, Richie’s chest tightening at the sound of it. He’d been crying. He might still be crying. 

“Yeah Eddie, it’s me. I’m here,” he says, trying to keep his tone as smooth as he could, as soothing as he could manage, having just been crying himself moments ago. “I’m here. Are you okay?” 

Eddie sniffles, though it’s muffled as if he’s hiding it, but Richie for once in his fucked up life doesn’t make a joke of it. He only hushes him soothingly through the phone, encouraging him on. Eddie sighs, and Richie pictures him running his fingers through his hair, slumped over on his little brownstones front steps. He closes his eyes. Focuses on his voice as he speaks. Let’s himself indulge. 

“Yeah… yeah I’m okay. I just–” Eddie was never good at outright speaking about his feelings, though in the end, were any of them? They all in their own way covered them up with jokes, with other meaningless noise simply to avoid talking about anything of substance. It had always felt too adult, too normal. Too scary. But Richie knows right now is not the time. He knows the waver in Eddie’s voice, knows the rawness of his tone, because he was in the same boat. “I’m… fuck this sounds so stupid. I’m lonely, y’know? I just miss you guys”. 

Deflecting. Eddie you sly dog, Richie thinks. That’s a deflection had he ever seen one before. Of course he missed everyone but Richie knew this wasn’t the real reason Eddie had texted him. Otherwise, he would have texted the whole group chat, everyone would have made plans they’d eventually, as usual, end up canceling a week prior. Then they’d do it all over again a couple weeks later. But Richie doesn’t say anything, because he can’t. He doesn’t know the real reason Eddie is calling, he only suspects that he’s not telling him the truth and the last thing someone needs when they’re breaking down is for someone to pry and wrench the truth from them. 

“I miss you too, Eds,” Richie says softly, so softly Eddie goes silent on the other line, a soft sigh escaping his lips. Richie was not in any state to make jokes right now, ironic that he was less than an hour away from performing an entire comedy set. Which, in case you didn’t know, involved telling jokes. Quite a few, in fact. 

“I know,” Eddie whispers back. Richie lets the call lull for a moment. Let’s the sound of Eddie’s neighbourhood fill his mind as he tries to think of something to say. Tries to make heads or tails of this before both of them hang up and one of them does something stupid. Tell him, Richie thinks. Just fucking tell him. But his ego doesn’t let the words bubble to the surface. They stay, deep within him, feasting on him like worms, his body the dirt. “I’m sorry for being so obnoxious right now. I know you’re busy. I know this is such a shit time to call when you’re just about to go on stage I–” Eddie takes a deep inhale, a near wheeze pulling from his throat. Richie hears him unzip something, hears him shake his inhaler before taking a gasping breath and breathing in the contents. He speaks inward, lungs still full, his voice strained, “I shouldn’t have called. I’m being so fucking selfish right now I–”

“Eddie I called you…” 

“I’m so sorry for being such a bad friend. I fucking forgot about you Richie. I almost let you die and I forgot about you and I treated you like shit and I still do I don’t even know why any of you still talk to me I’m such a fucking fuck up. I’m a loser, I’m–”

“That’s why we still talk to you man. That’s why for the last 27 fucking years of my life I haven’t been able to make a meaningful fucking connection with anyone around me. For 27 goddamn years. Because I missed you and I didn’t know I missed you. We all forgot each other, you can’t apologize for something we all did; something we all had no control over. I– We love you. We all do. We love you because you’re a Loser, we’re all Losers. I’m sitting here with a fucking handful of pills right now about to kill myself because I’m a fucking loser man. I’m a fucking piece of shit who doesn’t know the first thing about reaching out I–”

“Rich… you’re what? Oh my God, oh my fucking God are you okay?!” 

“Eddie–”

“Oh my GOD! Richie– Richie put them down man please, please… holy fuck–” Eddie is wheezing now, his lungs rattling in the way they always did when they were children. Richie feels his face burning, tears stinging at his eyes. He’s such a fucking idiot. This was about Eddie! This call was about Eddie and how Eddie felt and if Eddie was okay. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Not Richie. Eddie. 

“Eddie–!” 

“Fuckfuckfuck… fuck I knew I should have… fuck! I should have texted you earlier, I– fuck Richie please don’t die. Please… please I can’t lose you too”. There’s a shuffling in the background, a rattling.

“Eddie! Jesus fuck man, I’m not going to die. I dropped them the moment you texted me man, I don’t even know where they are now. Eddie… Eddie, put the fucking inhaler down man”. 

Eddie stops mid inhale over the receiver, and Richie can see when he closes his eyes, in his mind's eye, Eddie’s face lighting up pink. Cheeks aglow in embarrassment, knowing full well he didn’t need this shit anymore but still going back to it, a reflex. 

Eddie exhales into the phone, and Richie takes his glasses off, focusing all his attention on this call. “I’m okay,” Richie says again, quieter. He repeats it as many times as Eddie needs, “I’m okay. I’m alright. You’re okay. We’re both okay. Tell me what you see right now, where you are, what you’re wearing, who you’re with. What are you doing? How are you sitting?” 

Eddie is silent for a moment on the other end, but Richie can practically hear the man’s heartbeat in the receiver, or maybe it’s Richie’s. Either way. “Wh–”

“Just tell me”.

“I… okay,” Eddie breathes, and he’s quiet for a moment again, just a beat before he starts to tell Richie what he’s wearing. “Um… these really uncomfortable slippers Myra bought me. A pair of Levi’s, a button up… um…”

“Is it itchy?”

“What?”

“Is it itchy? You know. Scratchy? Is it starchy? Are shirts still starchy?”

Eddie snorts, “No it’s… it’s cotton it’s really comfortable. Um, it’s white. I wanna roll up the sleeves but I don’t want to put the phone down. I don’t want to stop talking to you”. 

“Then don’t”.

“Okay”.

“... Okay”. 

Richie’s turn to inhale, and he does, shakily. He feels like he’s been holding his breath for ages. He exhales just as badly and encourages Eddie to keep going. 

“What do you see out there in the Big Apple with your 20/20 vision, Spaghetti?” 

Eddie breathes a laugh against the phone, and Richie can just see the desire to tell Richie to stop calling him stupid nicknames rolling through his head. But Eddie doesn’t say it, not this time. He just breathes, looks around the block of his neighbourhood and tries to focus in on things. 

“There’s a cat across the street. There’s two teenagers sharing a joint at the bus stop. Fuck, I wish I had weed right now,” Eddie muses, chuckling to himself, “I feel like a teenager thinking that but, holy fuck I’d do anything for a bowl”. 

Richie laughs, tapping his fingers against the glass of his piece. Tall, matte black, beaker style. It’s his show piece, the one he has with him in every dressing room. “Edward Kaspbrak, do you want me to smoke you out?” 

“Richard Wentworth Tozier. I’d fly to Los Angeles right now and suck your dick for a toke if you let me”. 

Richie freezes.

He freezes and the phone nearly slips out of his hand when Eddie asks him if he’s alright a solid minute and a half later. “Rich? Richie! Hey, are you okay?”

“Wh– yeah. Yeah I’m… yeah I’m fine”. Jesus fucking Christ. Holy fucking Shit. Moses and the burning fucking bush Richie could not fucking do this right now. “I’m fine. Sorry, stage manager just came by to give me ten,” he bluffed. Reasonably, however. They’d been talking for ages now, Richie had to be ready to get out there soon. The show started at 8. 

“Oh, okay. I…” Eddie sounded better now. Less panicked. Richie swallowed thickly, eyeing the clock. The stage manager actually would be coming around in a minute, Richie stood up, eyeing himself in the mirror as Eddie spoke. “Thank you for calling. And calming me down”. 

“What’re friends for, Edmund?” Richie said, with practiced charm. He turned away from the mirror, having changed nothing about his appearance. Not for lack of wanting to, because lord knows he wanted to, but simply for lack of caring. He just didn’t give a shit. 

“Friends…” Eddie whispers, and Richie refuses to let himself hear the hurt in Eddie’s voice as he says it. Refuses to even acknowledge it because Richie has convinced himself, very well at this point may he add, that these things he hears when he talks to Eddie, even as kids, were all a figment of his imagination. His wild, gay boy brain trying and failing to make his fucked up thoughts a reality. Hallucinations. Make believe. “Thank you, Richie”. 

“Huh? For what?” Richie asks, shaken from his thoughts. 

“For… for being my friend, man. I love you”. 

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course Eduardo. Now, I am afraid I must leave you my good fellow,” Richie quickly slips into a voice, to distract his heart, to distract him. “You’ll be alright, yes?” 

Eddie snorts on the other end, and with the pause Richie knows he’s nodded his head before responding, remembering Richie couldn’t see him. “Yes– yeah I’ll be okay. Thank you again. Will you be okay?”

“Oh yes my good fellow! Right as rain, just a bit of those first venue jitters!” 

Eddie isn’t convinced, Richie can hear it in his voice, but he doesn’t pry. He only continues his goodbye, “okay. I love you Rich, please take care of yourself. Break a leg! Are they recording this one?”

“For Comedy Central, right-o my good chap!” 

“Good. Let me know when it’s coming out”. 

With that, Eddie Kaspbrak hangs up the phone, and Richie Tozier is given the 10 minute warning. He busies himself with collecting the pills on the ground, counting them all up to an even one-hundred, and putting them back in the bottle. He stows it away for another day. 

He has a good show. 

He sits at home that night with a beer in his hand and a joint in the other, and he looks up at the night sky. The stars blanketing the blackness, over the glittering, twinkling lights of Beverly Hills, and he feels small. Pathetic. And most of all, lonely. He goes back inside and heads to bed twenty minutes later, forgetting to check his phone.

**12:54 AM | Eddie:** Hey Rich, I’m going to be in LA next week.  
**12:54 AM | Eddie:** You got a spare room?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'm very excited for this fic, it's like, insanely personal to me? Um, I relate a lot to Richie, you'll probably find when you read that his chapters, the ones from his perspective, are a little better? At least from my perspective, they feel more real. Maybe that's bullshit to you guys who knows! Guess we'll see. Anywho, thank you for reading my shit! My friend Avery is beta-ing this and I haven't had a beta reader in fucking... uh... ever, so you Know I'm taking this seriously lmao. I'll see you all soon!


	2. it's 4am in new york

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Yes, it is a day early, thank you for noticing. But it's a very special day: today my puppy turns 10! Ten whole years old! I have known him for a decade. What a beautiful thing. I should give Richie and Eddie a dog someday. Reddie can have little a care for pet together like a couple as a treat.
> 
> **tw: Heavy internalized homophobia, drinking, weed**

Richie wakes up the next morning still drunk. Bleary eyed, covered in cold sweat. Suddenly. He stumbles into the bathroom to piss, gripping tight to the door frame as he staggers, the world spinning before he finds his balance and makes it to the toilet. Most mornings started this way, still half-drunk, then half-hungover. Covered in clammy, cold sweat from nightmares he could no longer remember once his eyes were graced with daylight. He’d always had nightmares, but they’d recently gotten worse. Probably something to do with staring directly into the throat of a fucking alien clown and then not going to therapy for it.

Like Beverly all those years ago, Richie couldn’t remember all of what he saw in the Deadlights. Only how he felt. The fear, the helplessness. It culminated into some pretty wicked dreams, and worse yet he was certain he’d never be able to drop acid again. Shucks. 

He runs a large hand down his face as he makes his way back to the bedroom, scratching at the stubble beneath his chin, feet padding on the bleached hardwood. The boards creek slightly as he stumbles over to his bed, falling onto the plush pillowtop and burying his face into the comforter, sighing bodily as he struggles to find the desire to get up again. 

His phone pings. 

It’s about noon now, nearing one. Richie doesn’t remember falling asleep, but then again does anyone ever? What a stupid thing to ask someone if they remember– losing conciousness. Richie stares at his phone as it pings again. Work emails, work texts, work phone calls, work work work. He doesn’t want to get up. He’d be much happier to just roll back over and fall back asleep and have a fucking nuke drop down and eviscerate him and everything around him. Much easier than dealing with his agent. 

Still, Richie isn’t stupid. He knows better than to ignore what is obviously important enough to bother him on his day off. Something must be up. 

He pulls the charger cable out of the bottom of his phone and rolls back over with it cupped in his hands, unlocking it and looking at his notifications. There were several very urgent emails filling up his inbox and a text from his manager but all of Richie’s mature adulting flies right out the window when he sees what else he’d missed in his weed coma. 

He has a text from Eddie. 

Eddie. 

Right. Shit, Richie nearly forgot. He talked to Eddie last night. On the phone. He smiles, lop-sided and fond, remembering their conversation, imaging Eddie in the outfit he’d talked about. It certainly wasn’t a sexy moment but, Richie had grown up having to be creative that way. He’d pocket it for a lonely night. 

Richie opens up their conversation, the dopey smile falling right off his face the moment he reads the messages. 

**12:54 AM | Eddie:** You got a spare room?  
**12:57 AM | Eddie:** Rich?  
**12:58 AM | Eddie:** Sorry, I guess it’s really fucking late there. Call me tomorrow!

Richie stares. He realizes after a moment that his jaw has dropped, and he quickly shuts it. Without hesitation he pulls up Eddie’s number and starts calling him. Just as quickly, he ends the call before it can even ring once, beginning to tap away at his phone. What fucking time is it right now in New York?

“Fuck,” Richie mumbles. It’s 4 PM. Eddie works 9-5 like the good, red-blooded capitalist pig he was. Richie was just going to have to wait an hour. Maybe more. He knew Eddie turned his phone off during the work day. None of the Losers knew how to shut the fuck up, Richie especially. Eddie didn’t like all the notifications, especially when he was in a meeting. Which, he learned the hard way, only spurred Richie on more to blow his phone up. Now, he kept it off. 

Richie takes a breath, grimacing. He could still taste scotch and tobacco on his tongue. 

He surrendered to the need to take care of himself, if only for the need to kill time. If he took his sweet time, he could be out of the shower by the time Eddie got off work, and then he could call. Texts on his mind the whole way, Richie distracted himself brushing his teeth, the taste of mint washing over his tongue before he spit the foam in the sink. He runs a brush through his hair quickly, tossing his glasses down on the counter before stepping into the shower. He spends most if not all of it thinking about Eddie and his sudden texts. Wondering. 

Eddie was coming to LA. Eddie needed a place to stay. Eddie wanted to stay with Richie. Had he asked Bill first and been turned down? Had he asked Bill at all? Eddie really wanted to stay with _him_? Eddie? 

Eddie. 

Eddie. Eddie. _Eddie._

Richie can think of nothing and no one else. The steam around him has him feeling dizzy and soon after, Richie climbs out of the shower. When he emerges, he’s red as a lobster and feeling just as baked. Both from the heat of the water and the heat of his thoughts. He shakes them off, old enough now to not launch himself into a day of tugging it out over his teenage crush. Though the idea is incredibly tempting.

In the comfort of his own home, Richie could think about whatever he wanted. He could do whatever he pleased. He could think about EddieEddieEddie until he was blue in the fucking face and then he could think about him when he fainted from lack of oxygen in the brain. He could think of summers and springs spent in the barrens, he could think of golden fields and summer sun melting the horizon into a puddle of violets and brilliant pinks and reds, framing Eddie’s round face and alighting his brown eyes like little fires, glowing from the inside out. He could imagine running toward him and cupping his cheek and telling him how he really, truly felt. He could pretend that things didn’t just… end the way they always did. The way all friendships did. He and Eddie fell out of touch, and when Richie moved away to LA, they both forgot. 

But in the comfort of his own home, now eight months since they’d seen each other again for the first time in two decades, Richie could imagine what it might have been like if Eddie had left with him instead. Where they’d be now. What their life would be like. He could imagine his brown eyes, now framed with the passage of time, but still as bright and curious about the world around him as they’d been when he was fresh-faced and not yet faced with the horrors of the world beyond his overbearing mother and a town too small to hold his curiosity and love of life. Richie could think about how he felt when he first saw him again after all these years. When he heard his voice, so different from how it’d been. So adult. So grown up. So hardened. 

It was deep, gravelly. So different from the last time he’d heard it, still young, still coming into it. Richie stops himself thinking for a moment, stops his indulging. He takes a moment to collect himself, reminding his brain and his heart and his gut that he’s in his house. And in the safety of his own home, in his own mind, unimpeded by the fear of mind readers, of people knowing simply by virtue– he could think of Eddie. 

He could think about how handsome he was. How those dimples in his cheeks appeared when he truly laughed, and he could think too about how Richie was usually the one to bring them out. He could think, in the confines of his mind, about the lines of his face, the outline of his stubbled jaw, strong and sharp. He could think about how comfortably Eddie would fit beneath his chin, wrapped up in his arms. How soft his lips would feel pressed against his own. 

Richie shakes the water out of his hair like the dog he is, drying it messily with a towel. He eyes himself in the misted vanity. He’s scruffy, hair growing much too long for his liking, he can pull it up into a bun at this point. He’s starting to grow a beard. It occurs to him that he hasn’t shaved in well over a week, which would certainly do it. He looks exhausted, the bags under his eyes almost embarrassing. Especially because they weren’t from working hard, they were from putting his body through hell for the sake of forgetting. Coping.

He sighs, scratching at the stubble on his jaw before rolling his eyes. Whatever, he still needed to kill some time. He could shave. 

Richie emerges from the bathroom with a fresh face and a towel around his waist, eyeing his alarm clock as if challenging it. Just tell him it’s not two yet, just fucking tell him and see what happens you stupid fucking clock.

2:12 PM. 

Nothing holds him back now.

Richie grabs his phone, ignores the culminating emails and texts from his manager and pulls up Eddie’s contact card again, calling him and waiting with bated breath as the phone rings. Eddie answers on the third ring and Richie feels like a teenager when his heart skips a beat. 

“Hello?”

“Hey! Eddie, sorry. Fell asleep last night, couldn’t respond to your text”.

“It’s okay. Figured you were in bed. You sleep well?”

“Yeah, yeah! You?”

Eddie is smiling as he speaks, Richie can hear it in his voice. He’s reminded of his early days in elementary school, learning how to properly answer the phone. With a smile, with a greeting. They could hear the smile in your voice, his teacher would say when they practiced. Richie never believed that shit, not until he and Eddie started talking on the phone after school a couple years later. And now, he always smiles when he speaks, hoping that Eddie can hear it in his voice, too. 

“Yeah. I did. A lot better after talking to you, actually”. 

Richie thinks, well gee! That’s such a nice thing to say to a friend. He’s very happy to be a good friend to Eddie. “So, what’s bringing you to LA, Eduardo?”

“Huh? Oh! Right, sorry. Zoning out”. 

“S’okay! Rough day at work?” Richie asks, Eddie only grunts, as if he doesn’t want to say anything. “Wife gettin’ ya down?”

Eddie breathes, an exhale of a laugh, “yeah, sure,” he says, not answering either question. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it, brushing Richie off easily enough. And Richie doesn’t pry or push. Eddie speaks earnestly as he explains, clearly appreciative of Richie’s new found ability to keep his mouth shut and mind his own goddamn business. Richie doesn’t admit that it’s simply because he doesn’t want to hear shit or ass about Myra. 

“It’s a work thing,” Eddie says. 

“Oh, sick. How long are you gonna be out here?”

Eddie goes quiet for a moment, as if mulling over his answer before, Richie can picture in his mind's eye, he probably shrugs his square shoulders, “long as it takes,” Eddie says simply. “They have me doing some big fucking outreach shit for some huge firm in downtown LA. Gonna be there for two months at least”.

“They ain’t paying for a hotel?”

Eddie makes a noise in his throat on the other line and Richie knows what it means. It didn’t matter if they were paying for a room or not, Eddie didn’t want to stay in one. Richie could hear his shrill voice in his ear as if he were right next to him, ‘they’re dirty! Do you know how many germs are in a hotel room? How many people have slept in them? Who even knows if the sheets were changed!’ Hotel rooms were breeding grounds for everything from fungi to bacteria to mites to bed bugs. Plus some viruses thrown in for good measure. Probably some tapeworm in a monocle and top hat ready to crawl up your ass too when you weren’t paying attention.

“Eduardo, my good fellow! You’re going to use me?!”

“Oh, without a fucking doubt, Richard”.

The two share an easy laugh, falling back into their banter like they hadn’t lost 27 years and 8 months of their lives together. It was easy talking to Eddie. It always was. It was as easy as breathing. 

“Well, lucky you Kaspbrak. I have an extra room with an en suite nobodies using. Got a pool out back. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to, my man,” and Richie means it.

Fuck, he means it. If Eddie wanted to stay forever, Richie would let him. God, he would let him.

“Seriously? I mean I– I don’t want to impose. Rich, you can say no, I’ll–”

“Yeah, no. Seriously. I mean it, man. No one else lives here anyway. You wouldn’t be imposing. Besides,” Richie pouts, puts it into his voice, sounds sickly sweet when he speaks again, “I’m lonely up here in the Hollywood Hills, baby”. 

Richie almost swears he hears Eddie’s breath catch on the other line but, if he really did, Richie doesn’t let himself believe it. A little breeze between his legs has him remembering he hasn’t gotten dressed, and he tosses his phone back onto the bed, hitting speaker as he sits himself up and walks to the closet to find something to wear. Eddie is still quiet for a moment, and Richie thinks he might have hung up until finally, Eddie erupts into such a brilliant laugh that Richie nearly has to grab onto his dresser to steady himself, his legs like jello pooling around him. 

He sounds so genuine. So happy. So bright. Real. Richie giggles back, and Eddie sighs, he still sounds like he’s smiling. Bright. Alive. Real. 

Richie closes his eyes as he picks out a t-shirt, flashes of lives he’d thankfully never live playing like movies in his mind. Richie feels nothing but gratitude for the first time in his life that this is the timeline he got to walk. The one where Eddie was alive. 

The one where Eddie could laugh along with him. The one where Eddie was breathing, was talking, was asking to live with him. Of course, this doesn’t come without the reminder of everything else. The killer clown, the fact that Eddie very much could have died in Richie’s arms– did in fact, in another reality. The fact that Stan was… they’d never know adult Stan. He was still that little, curly haired boy on his bike, reading his Torah, watching the birds, wise beyond his years but still so scared he couldn’t take it. Richie’s expression falls, his laughter teetering out as he buttons up his pants. He feels himself diving back into that river of self-pity, the embrace warm. It calls him like a siren, and he struggles against the current, fighting to pull himself up again.

But Eddie, Eddie is there. Eddie knows, almost immediately. Eddie always knew. 

“Hey?” he whispers, his voice is soft. So soft and so warm. Richie’s heart flutters in his chest, and he feels the start of guilt washing over him. He tries to shake it off. “You okay, Rich?”

“I… yeah. Yeah, I just… I was…” Richie trails off, stops. He shakes his head. He should talk. He should make some kind of effort to voice how he feels, speak up. He should, he wants to. But he doesn’t. “I was just thinking about all the cleaning I’m gonna have to do before you get here”. Richie’s turn to deflect. Just like Eddie, just like the rest of the Losers, he’s a pro.

“If there’s even a speck of dust on your dresser, I’ll never hear the goddamn end of it”.

Eddie laughs, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “oh yes. Because living in squalor is just want I want to do in LA. Get a fucking swiffer wet jet man, it isn’t hard”.

Richie snorts, tugging his shirt over his head, “easy for you to say. You know I’ve never cleaned a fucking thing in my life. The mold on my pizza has mold growing on it. I’m pretty sure the blue cheese that’s been in my fridge since I moved in three years ago is getting jealous”.

“Ew! Jesus fucking Christ Richie,” Eddie sounds completely disgusted. Richie tries not to think about the way his lip curls up, or the crease between his brows. And he especially tries not to think about the tone of jest in Eddie’s voice when he continues, “you’re vile”. 

“And you love it!” Richie says without thinking, ignoring the heat he feels running up his neck. 

“Oh, I really do not”. Richie can hear the smile in his voice again. He tries extra hard not to think about that, either. And more so, he tries not to think about the way that Eddie softly says goodbye, or the way he texts him after they both hang up to tell him he’ll be on his way Friday morning and that he’s excited to see him. Richie definitely doesn’t think about that at all.

. . .

Nothing in the entire world feels worse than the cloying, unbearable embrace of guilt. 

Maybe shame came close. Or maybe they both came hand in hand. 

And just because things happened well as kids, didn’t mean that your old friends and you would fall back into a comfortable rhythm. Once the allure of recollection and memory wore off and the rose-tinted glasses shattered on the pavement, adults did what they did best, despite all once being kids. They moved on. 

Maybe that’s why Richie could never properly move past the guilt and the shame he felt every goddamn moment of his life. 

He never grew up.

Still a kid at heart, perhaps because that’s just who he was. But more likely because of the trauma of growing up in Derry. Fucking Pennywise, facing death and violence and utter fucking fear, and worst of all, facing the gaze of people in town. Knowing. They must know. They had to. 

Shame wrapped around him like the silky water of the Barren’s wrapped around the grimy, moss covered rocks in the shallows, bubbling and pooling and slowly, with the passage of time, eating away. Shame was painted on his face every time he conveniently broke the chain on his bike and couldn’t take it with him, therefore having to share with Eddie, holding on tight around his waist, falling against his shoulder just to have that contact. Shame pooled in his stomach when he caught the bounce of Stan’s curls as he rode just up ahead, the summer sun golden against his cheek, pulling Richie in with every smile, every laugh. Shame squeezed him like a vice when Bill made his speech at Neibolt, not once stuttering over his words, not once losing his footing, and Richie felt his heart squeeze in his chest at the realization. More than pride for his friend. When Ben prattled on endlessly about the architecture and history of Derry, on and on until it became nothing but radio noise to Richie who was too busy watching the way his face lit up when Bev asked him questions, the curve of the boys cheeks and his chubby fingers playing at the sleeves of his sweater leaving Richie’s breath stuck in his throat. 

Shame probed him when he and the rest of the Losers went up to Mike’s farm to help out one winter day and he watched Mike wrap a baby lamb up in his strong arms and bottle feed it, looking up at Richie from the straw covered barn floor, winking up at him like it wasn’t going to make Richie’s fucking knees weak. 

It wasn’t that Richie had a crush on every single person in the group, it was just that he was a teenager. And while other boys were feeling these things about the girls around them, Richie felt them about the boys. And at first, he felt shame because they were his friends. He thought you shouldn’t feel that way about your friends, you shouldn’t find your friends attractive, or get weak in the knees when they tugged at your shirt, unable to catch their breath, and asked you to reach into their fanny packs to grab their inhalers. 

The shame wrapped its tightest once Richie realized that feeling that way about your friends was fine, as long as they were girls. The shame, like a boa constrictor around him, crushing each of his ribs like it was nothing at all, became unbearable when Bev, not phased by the presence of her friends in the room, changed her pajamas in front of them all. Richie remembers the expressions on everyone’s faces, the awe, the intrigue. And he remembers feeling none of it, even as she lifted her shirt up over her head, her training bra peeling off with it, before she managed to turn around and throw on her pajama shirt. All Richie could think the whole time was, ‘I should be feeling something. I’m not feeling anything. Am I broken? Is something wrong with me?’ 

The shame and guilt, he knows it well. It keeps him from moving on like the rest of his friends. It scared him. Deep, deeper into the metaphorical closet.

He’s sure he’s snuck into the cubby hole deep inside the closet at this point, curled up on the floor behind a secret door so deep inside himself that he could barely bring himself to imagine in the comfort of his own home without having a crisis. He couldn’t even do things in private. Guilt had a seductive hold, shame even more so. The need to survive, basic instinct from growing up in a world where men like Richie didn’t get happy endings, kept the man in question far, far away from that part of himself. He surrounded himself with single women, insisted on putting himself into situations he couldn’t get out of, prided himself on appearing as straight as a fucking board. 

He spoke of girlfriends he’d never had, of the rough and incredibly heterosexual, baby driven, primal sex he had with them every single day. And when Richie went to bed at night, he still felt like he wasn’t hiding enough. That someone knew. 

They had to.

He was too obvious. He needed more pussy eating jokes in his sets. More jokes about tits. He needed to portray himself in such a way that no one could ever logically question him. Straighter and straighter. There would be no ‘dirty little secret’ if Richie could beat it back enough that he finally, successfully convinced himself he was a heterosexual man. He could do it. He had to do it. 

Maybe he’s scared of death. Maybe he’s afraid of becoming another statistic. Internalized homophobia. He’d looked it up before, spent a lot of time online trying to figure himself out when he was in college and well after, too scared of being outed to actually experiment in person. Richie wasn’t homophobic, in fact he never touched the subject at all in conversation. He kept well away from it, leaving it up in the air. He didn’t want the connection because the connection would be too obvious. He didn’t want that. He couldn’t survive that. 

He has a feeling if he grew up in today’s world, so open and still so brutal to men like Richie, he’d be swearing backwards and forwards, up and down, in some small town GSA club in some hick high school that he really was just an ally, all the while checking out his friends track star thighs in his tiny red shorts. It was just the kind of man Richie was. 

A man ravaged by guilt. By shame. By fear. Fear of what, he isn’t really sure. He doesn’t know, can’t properly place it. He’d heard of the hate crime in Derry, the catalyst to the Losers rejoining to defeat Fear itself. Maybe it was self-preservation. The need to protect himself from faceless bullies with knives and words sharper than any stupid fucking blade. 

A boy, scared of dying. A man scared of Hell, despite already living through it.

. . .

Richie is sharing a toke in his living room with a meek woman he met last night at a show. Brunette and dark-eyed, small but so incredibly feisty. Her name is something simple and it starts with an E and Richie, the stupidest man on the planet, never makes the connection. 

Her thick brows furrow as she eyes the end of the joint, orange burning brilliantly in the dark of Richie’s living room before it fades out and she hands the butt back to Richie, exhaling as Richie finishes off the roach with practiced grace. 

Shaking with jitters he’s so stoned now, Richie kisses the woman’s temple before she wobbles up off the sofa and makes her way around the room collecting her clothes. 

“Thanks for the weed, Tozier”. 

Richie smiles, all teeth as he gives her a salute, “my pleasure, madame”. 

She offers him a cheeky smile, bids him goodbye, and slips out into the early morning light, never to be seen again. Richie falls back against the couch when he sees the front door shut, running a hand down his face. Eddie was on the plane _right now_ , he would be arriving in less than three hours and Richie hadn’t so much as washed a fucking dish. He’d been wasting time since Eddie invited himself to live here, unsure of himself and finding the time rushing by until now, he was sitting in his messy fucking house getting high with some stranger before he could even lift a finger to take out the trash. Pathetic doesn’t cut it. This was just plain fucking stupid. 

Sighing, Richie peels himself off the couch, baked like a fucking cookie and post-sex hazy, for the first time in three hours. Eddie would be here at 4. It was already nearing noon. Richie squinted at the clock in disgust, wondering whose brilliant fucking idea it was to invent the passage of time. Get fucked. 

Richie fiddles around with his phone for a moment, seeing a message from Eddie that he must have sent before taking off. It’s a picture out the window of the plane, still on the tarmac. Beneath it, Eddie has sent a text. 

**10:12 AM | Eddie:** Leaving soon, see you in a couple hours.

He smiles, dopey and bright and hazy, the fog in his brain relieving him of his inhibitions long enough to fall back in love with Eddie all over again. For the millionth time. Richie suddenly feels reinvigorated. Revitalized. He wants to show Eddie a clean room. He wants to show him around his shitty little house and have Eddie be proud of him for keeping in clean and tidy and taking care of it. He wanted Eddie to be comfortable. He wanted Eddie to come in and take his shoes off and sit down on the couch and turn on the TV after a long day at work and throw his feet up on the coffee table. Richie wanted to bring him a home cooked meal, appear behind the couch, cover his eyes with his hand and have him guess what he made, have him smile at his touch. 

Richie hums to himself, finally finding something to listen to while he got busy cleaning. He wanted Eddie to be comfortable. He wanted him to be happy. There was plenty of time to tease him later but for right now, Richie just wanted to make him feel welcome. 

So, that’s how Richie ends up scrubbing the hardwood floor in the guest bedroom on his hands and knees, cleaning the room from top to bottom in a daze until it’s spotless. 

By the time 4:38 PM rolls around and Eddie is texting him that he’s been waiting at LAX forever at this point, all Richie needs to do is find some clean sheets. Richie wipes the sweat off his brow before baulking at the time and the onslaught of EddieEddieEddie on his phone. 

Richie dashes out his front door without a second thought, hair still in a stupid fucking ponytail on top of his head as he sits his bare thighs down in his leather seats, hissing before turning on the A/C. His little baby rumbles to life, purring the whole way. Richie makes it to the airport in record time, a sleepy looking Eddie awaiting him by the curb, surrounded by luggage. Richie shouts out the open window the moment he sees him, “hey Princess! How was the flight?” 

Eddie snorts, hoisting a suitcase into the trunk of Richie’s red mustang. It’s gaudy. It’s too much. It’s very Richie. 

Richie climbs out of the car, always eager to help, and makes quick work of Eddie’s bags. Each one of them has a tag with Eddie’s information on them, written hastily but still neatly as Eddie was prone to do. Together the two of them have Eddie’s stuff in the car in no time and as Richie reaches up to close the trunk, he takes note of Eddie raking his eyes over his body. Richie blushes under his gaze, feels his cheeks heat up, he ducks his head briefly before straightening up, “what? Like what you say?” he says with a wink, Eddie doesn’t react, responding with a soft sigh.

“What in the fucking world are you wearing?” he says quietly, turning to open his door. 

Richie looks down after clicking the trunk shut. He has a pair of very old swim trunks with neon palm trees and flamingos on them and a black shirt with a pixelated, green horse and buggy which reads, ‘You have died of dysentery’ in green, blocky font. It’s from Oregon Trail. 

“Uh, my cleaning outfit?” Richie says, as if it's obvious, before he climbs back into the drivers side, flitting around with his keys for a moment, checking his mirrors, before taking off like a shot. 

“I knew you’d leave it to the last fucking minute,” Eddie says, no bite to his words. 

Richie shoots him a cheeky grin, “yeah but, I still did it”.

“That remains to be seen”.

Richie drives. Eddie sleeps, almost immediately passing out. The music on the radio is soft, the warm air pouring through the rolled down window raising the hair on Richie’s pale arms. Everyday is summer in California, but Richie can’t help the goosebumps rising up his neck when he looks over and catches Eddie drooling. 

He’s amazed he doesn’t crash on the way back, stealing more glances at Eddie than at the road ahead. His soft breaths, his long lashes brushing against the tops of his cheeks. He looks calm, so different from how Richie imagined he’d be in Richie’s car. But he’s tired, Richie can see that. Even in the calm of his sleep, there are lines in his face that never relax. There are bags under his eyes, a five o’clock shadow on his tight jaw, getting closer to a beard now. 

Richie sighs, changing gears when they hit a stretch of open road, palm trees reaching toward the sun high up above them, passing by as Richie speeds close to 100 by the time Eddie stirs. 

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty”. 

Eddie hums as he pops a crick in his neck, scratching at the stubble along his jaw before he speaks up, his voice gritty with sleep. Richie tries to ignore the way his heart fucking stops in his chest, skipping a full beat before racing to catch up with itself beneath his ribs. 

“What’s the speed limit on this road?” Eddie asks, peaking at the speedometer and then out the window to find a road sign.

Richie speeds up, passing 100 easily, the Mustang purring under them. Richie had always been a bit of a gearhead. More so when it became a lucky excuse to get Eddie to come over in his little shorts and t-shirts to help him fix up Wentworth’s old truck. Eddie did most of the work in the end, covered in motor oil, not because Richie couldn’t fix a car but because he was just too busy having a fucking heart attack everytime Eddie lifted the hem of his white t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, the rolled up sleeves of his shirt only exagerating the definition of Eddie’s upper arms. Everytime he lifted his shirt, Richie caught a quick glimpse of his happy trail crawling up his taut stomach, leaving Richie fighting off a fucking anneurysm at the tender age of 18.

Eddie had been two months away from leaving Derry forever, he was going off to college. That summer it had just been Richie, Eddie, and Mike. Everyone else had already left, Ben the most recent, Stan right before him, Bill right after Bev that first summer after they’d killed It. Well, so they’d hoped. Richie was the last to go, packing up his shit and dreaming of LA, making a pit stop in Chicago for college, very intent on never looking back. Their 18th summer prior to this of course was spent in that fucking shitty red truck, just Richie, Eddie, and Mike. Cruising, driving out to abandoned beaches, star filled nights spent drinking and smoking in the countryside, trying and failing to avoid goodbye. 

“I dunno,” Richie finally says, running his fingers through his hair, “like 60?”

“60?!” Eddie squawks, sitting up straight and looking around wildly. 

“Dude, it’s fine. This is practically a private road. Cops don’t fucking bother. This is Beverly Hills, not some hick town in the middle of nowhere Maine”. Richie reaches down, going to switch gears again, hand resting on the stick shift. 

Eddie isn’t convinced, placing his hand over Richie’s on the stick. Richie nearly jumps out of his seat, glancing over quickly at Eddie before looking back at the road ahead, “that’s not the point. It isn’t safe”. 

Richie blinks, slowing down to the speed limit without another word. He wants Eddie to be comfortable; happy, he remembers. Richie could cruise if that’s what Eddie wanted. He sits back in his seat, one hand on the wheel, and looks over at Eddie, whose hand is still on his. 

“Eyes on the road,” Eddie says suddenly. Richie quickly sits up, looks ahead, “hands on ten and two”. 

Eddie removes his hand, which Richie doesn’t dare move until Eddie has folded his back in his lap, and does as he’s told. He swallows thickly, tapping his fingers on the wheel to the beat of some mindless song on the radio, stealing glances of Eddie as he looks wistfully out the window at the California summer rolling by.


	3. obligatory song chapter (now with mixtape!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every story needs a song chapter and i am here to provide. please enjoy this totally fun, very friendly chapter! they're just friends. 
> 
> here's the playlist btw:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0tnDpBOOvBb4CaLAXjijbg?si=mUdPOvRqQyGxwxyn20mGtQ

They arrive back at Richie’s place a couple minutes later. The rest of the drive is quiet and neither of them say a word as they gather Eddie’s things from the trunk and carry them up the driveway. It’s comfortable silence though, the kind Richie missed– the kind he didn’t feel the need to fill up with bullshit and nonsense. They make quick work of all of Eddie’s shit, ten whole bags in total, about three trips out to the car. 

“Think you got enough shit for two months?” Richie finally says once they’ve brought everything in, all of Eddie’s luggage sitting by the door, surrounding them. 

Eddie huffs, taking a look around at all his bags, “could be more than two months, remember?”

Richie nods his head, fishing his phone out of his pocket and fiddling around with it for a moment before music fills the house, Stevie Nicks _Talk To Me_ filling the space between them. Richie looks up at Eddie through his lashes, gauging his reaction before putting his phone in his pocket, the other man seemingly content with the song choice. Richie notes the small bob of his head as he listens, smiling contently to himself as he takes in the room before him. 

“It looks like my college dorm in here,” Eddie says suddenly, lip curling up as it often did when he was disgusted, but his words have no bite, “smells like it too”. 

Richie feels his knees grow a little weaker at the smirk Eddie sends him, and Richie ducks into the kitchen as if it’ll help him get away from the feeling. Of course, it’s open concept, so Eddie is still there, digging around in his things for a moment. Richie tries to ignore the curve of his hips as he turns around to find something, instead distracting himself with pulling things down from the cupboard, busying himself with thoughts of supper. 

“Well that’s no way to treat a host now is it?” Richie laughs, pulling down a box of lasagna noodles. “Besides, Eddie Kaspbrak? With a weed den dorm room? I don’t think I believe that”. 

The look Eddie gives him when he turns around, holding shampoo and body wash in his hands erupts butterflies in Richie’s gut. It’s a look that says something along the lines of, _you have no idea._

“I’m going to go for a shower,” Eddie starts, walking toward Richie in the kitchen before pausing, unsure of himself for a moment. Richie looks at him, taking a moment to realize what he was doing. So much for being a good host, he thinks. 

“Here, lemme show you around Chez Richie, Eds”. 

Eddie gives him a look before nodding his head, Richie making his way out from behind the island in the kitchen as Melissa Etheridge croons over his surround sound about a long haired girl with similar features to her own. Again, Richie, the stupidest man on earth, doesn’t make the connection.

“So this is the kitchen, of course. Living room over there. There’s another bathroom right upstairs to your left, and the patio is out there, pools out back,” Richie points as he walks through the house, making his way toward the staircase, ushering Eddie up before him. He watches him, again trying his damndest to ignore the swing in his walk as he makes his way up the hardwood stairs. Richie tries not to imagine this in another world, the both of them going toward the same bedroom, sharing laughter under the covers. He runs a hand through his hair, stepping onto the landing next to Eddie and distracting himself by continuing the tour. 

“My rooms at the end of the hall, feel free to bug me whenever you want,” Richie says with a smile, Eddie only rolls his eyes, though he’s got a tired looking half smile working its way onto his lips. Richie thinks about kissing it away. 

“Your room is right here,” he says, opening up the door to the scent of lemon floor polish and cranberry Febreeze. Eddie steps in, backlit by the falling California sun as it pours through the massive window on the far wall. “Bathroom is through that door, closet is over here obviously. Dresser, bed… I need to grab you clean sheets and some pillows. I’ll grab them for you while you’re in the shower”. 

Eddie takes in the room, looking around, running his hands over the furniture as if he’s inspecting it. Probably looking for dust, Richie thinks with a dopey grin. 

“Thanks again, Rich,” Eddie says, turning to him with a smile that Richie, even being the stupidest man on earth notes is too tired to be fully genuine. Eddie looks exhausted, more so than he did when Richie picked him up half an hour ago. Richie wants to say something. Richie wants to step toward him, close the distance, place his hands around his waist and ask him to tell him how he’s doing. Share with him what’s got him down, what’s eating away at him. But Richie does what he usually does when he wants to do those things, he doesn’t. 

“Yeah man, no worries. Seriously, stay as long as you need to,” and he’s already leaving the room, turning before he closes the door behind him. Eddie is still watching him, and Richie almost swears he wants to say something but, a moment passes and Eddie doesn’t speak up, so Richie smiles at him and gives him a little wave, shutting the door and making his way downstairs. He hears the shower start a moment later. 

Richie runs his hands down his face at the bottom of the stairs, looking around his pad with a look of distaste. The milk crate furniture stands out like a sore thumb, his Star Trek posters an almost embarrassing blemish on his walls. What did Eddie think? Richie sighs, shaking the thought and turning to go back to the kitchen before doing a double take at the luggage by the door. He looks back up the steps and then back at the luggage before smiling to himself as he begins to carry it upstairs to Eddie’s room. 

By the time the shower shuts off and Richie hears the shower curtain slide across the bar, Richie is busying himself with the fitted sheet, tucking each corner under the mattress until he’s content with it’s fit. While he smooths out the duvet, Eddie emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, hair dripping wet down his forehead, waist wrapped in a towel. Richie turns to look at him, regretting it immediately. He’s all smooth skin and dark hair, dripping wet from the shower, skin blushed red from the heat, practically glowing. He smells of sandalwood and pine, and he looks much more relaxed now that he’s cleaned off the stale air from his flight. 

“Wh– Rich. You didn’t need to bring up all my stuff,” Eddie says, the smile on his face betraying the gratitude he tries to hide from his voice. Richie stares at him for a moment, trying to make sense of the words he’s saying before blinking and ducking his head, crawling off the bed to stand awkwardly in the opposite corner of the room, much too far from the door for his liking. 

“What kind of host would I be if I didn’t?” Richie says, surprised at the evenness in his voice. Eddie smiles at him, stepping into the room and making his way over to his luggage. He picks up a duffle bag, unzipping it once he tosses it on the bed and rummages through it for a moment. Richie stands in his corner like a kid on timeout, breath stuck in his throat. Water drips off a strand of hair in front of Eddie’s eyes, and when he meets Richie’s he’s sure he’s going to faint.

“You gonna just stand there or can I get dressed?” Eddie asks, and Richie jumps to action. 

“Shit, sorry, um,” Richie looks around the room for a moment, frazzled and panicked before grabbing two pillows from the closet and throwing them on the bed. He makes a b-line for the door, “dinner will be ready soon, you like lasagna?” 

Eddie takes a moment to smooth out a pale yellow polo and a pair of plaid bermuda shorts on the freshly made bed before nodding to himself, turning to give Richie a smile that has Richie aching to go back downstairs before he does something stupid. “Yeah man, you know I do”. 

“Haha… yeah,” Richie stands there a moment longer, eyes locked with the floorboards before he turns to close the door behind him, “I’ll be downstairs, Eds”. 

“Alright, Rich”. 

Richie closes the door quietly, stands there for a moment in complete silence, and then wobbles down the stairs toward the kitchen in a fucking daze.

. . .

Eddie comes back downstairs a couple minutes later, frowning at his phone as Richie busies himself in the kitchen, singing along to Magic Man by Heart. He looks up and spots Eddie sitting down on a stool at the island as the guitar drips like honey from the speakers.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Richie asks, stirring a pot of sauce on the stove, it bubbles away in the space of quiet between them.

Eddie seems a world away for a moment and Richie snaps his fingers in front of his face, “earth to Edward Spaghedward, what’s got ya in a tizzy, ol’ chap?” 

Eddie nearly jumps out of his skin, phone flying out of his hands as he fumbles to keep hold of it. He pockets it after a second of juggling the thing and shakes his head, “nothing, nothing. Work shit,” he says, too quickly. Richie frowns. 

“A’ight,” he mumbles, turning back to the sauce, eyeing the noodles in the other pot as they bubble away. Paradise by the Dashboard Light pours through the kitchen and Richie quickly forgets about the interaction, bobbing his head along to the music as he busies himself spicing the sauce. 

“Are you… making that from scratch?” Eddie seems genuinely intrigued, if not a little put off. Richie feigns offense. 

“Edward… of course I am. What do I look like to you? An animal?” Richie scoops up a little bit of sauce to taste, humming to himself contentedly before looking back to Eddie, who is obviously gearing up to say something, “don’t answer that”.

Eddie snorts, resting his chin in his hand, his other gesturing for Richie to pass him the wooden spoon. Richie does as asked, scooping up a bit of the sauce, holding his hand under the spoon as he leans over the counter to offer it. Eddie leans forward, lips pressed against the wood as he takes a taste. Richie tries his damndest to ignore his heart in his fucking ears. Eddie closes his eyes as he sits back, nodding his head with a hum, “not bad, Rich”. 

Richie’s heart soars. 

“All from scratch,” he says with a cheeky grin, pointing with his thumb to the blender on the counter soaking away with red tinted dish soap. “Sorry, I was hoping it’d be ready before you got out of the shower, but as it turns out, lasagna is a little more difficult to make than spaghetti”. 

Eddie gives him a pointed look before slipping off the stool to make his way around the other side of the counter, Richie ignores the catch of his breath as he sidles up next to him, watching him stir away at the sauce. 

“Need any help with anything?” he asks, eyeing everything on the counter. The blocks of cheese, fresh basil and oregano sitting on the wooden cutting board, the noodles bubbling away. Richie snorts, shaking his head. 

“You’re a guest, Eds. Go sit yourself down and watch something on the boob tube”. 

Eddie turns around and busies himself looking through the cupboards, Richie turns to watch him. 

“What are you looking for? Glasses are in that one if you need ‘em”.

“I want to help, dude”. 

“Eddie, I said–”

“I want to help”.

Eddie looks determined, clearly not backing down. Richie swallows, nodding his head, “okay, man. Um… you can shred some cheese? Grater is in the cupboard next to the glasses”. 

Eddie smiles as if he’s won the war, turning back around to grab it. He rummages around in the drawer Richie pointed out that contained the aluminum foil before sitting down at the counter again and busying himself with a brick of cheddar. The music of their childhood is pouring through the open space of the kitchen, Eddie’s damp hair catching a slight breeze from the open windows as Richie busies himself looking for his lasagna pan somewhere deep in his cupboards.

Despite looking and smelling like Bigfoot, Richie was fairly decent at feeding himself. He’d actually considered going to culinary school and working for Gordon Ramsay once, but he didn’t want to make the man cry when he realized Richie was clearly the better chef. So, he decided on comedy instead. 

Eddie is a ball of determination as he carefully and quickly makes work of the cheese, eventually standing up to find a knife for the ball of fresh mozzarella Richie had bought especially for this. He’s singing along to the lyrics of Trouble Me, an almost croon in his voice as he makes perfect circles of gooey mozzarella and sets them aside. 

“ _There's more, honestly, than my sweet friend, you can see. Trust is what I'm offering if you trouble me._ ”. Richie didn’t know it was possible to fall more in love than rock bottom but, here he was. 

He’s almost relieved when the song changes to something much less on the nose and he can finally start breathing again.

. . .

They eat dinner on the patio by the pool, a bottle of champagne sitting between them, bubbling away in their glasses, music still bellowing through the speakers, just outside now. That was one of the first renovations Richie oversaw when he bought the place. Surround sound and bluetooth. Richie loved music, and he wasn’t about to deny himself the pleasure of being surrounded by it at all hours of the day in his first home. He’s thankful for it as him and Eddie eat in silence, melodies and prose filling the space Richie knows he’d have trouble doing with his words.

The lasagna came out even better than the last time Richie made it– his mom’s old recipe. Richie thinks that now, it’s finally his. And Eddie’s. 

He looks up from his plate at the man in question, watching him look out over the hillsides to the twinkling lights of the city below them, taking in the Hollywood sign off in the distance. He’s illuminated by the setting sun, practically aglow in the endless summer light overhead. Richie turns to look out at the scenery as well before his eyes settle on the pool. He wants to go for a swim. 

“How is it?” he asks, a mouthful of pasta. 

“Still delicious, just like when you asked me two minutes ago,” Eddie says pointedly, taking a sip of his champagne. Richie watches the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows, his own bobbing too when he practically gulps. If Eddie noticed, he doesn’t say anything, simply going back to his food. He wipes up the remainder of the sauce with a piece of garlic toast, humming to himself in thought. “You have a really nice house, Rich”.

Richie feels his cheeks heat up, though for once its simply normal bashfulness, “thanks, man. Cost me a fortune, so I sure hope so”.

“Yeah I can’t imagine the houses up here are cheap. How much did you pay for this place?”

Richie looks up to the sky as he thinks, chewing on his own slice of garlic bread for a moment before swallowing it down, “close to two million”.

Eddie baulks, and Richie can’t help but laugh, “that’s not even including all the money I’ve put into it fixing it up. I mean, it was fine when I got it, but I had to completely renovate the living room. Knocked out a wall and everything”. 

“No shit!” 

“Yeah shit. Painted the sucker like three times before I could decide on a fucking colour”. 

“No wonder you don’t have any fucking furniture,” Eddie fires back. Richie nearly chokes on his last bite of dinner, laughing brightly. 

“Shit! Eddie gets off a good one,” he chuckles, reaching to take a sip of his champagne, swallowing it down in one easy gulp before setting the glass back down and rummaging around in his pockets. He pulls out his pack of smokes and sticks one between his lips, lighting it up and taking a long drag. He exhales to the side, thankful the wind takes it away from Eddie rather than toward him. Eddie still makes a face, sitting back a little further in his chair.

“I thought you were gonna quit?” he asks, eyeing the cigarette between Richie’s fingers as he takes another pull. 

Richie exhales through his nose, shrugging his shoulders, “I did”. 

Eddie raises a brow, “quitting for one day doesn’t count”.

Richie waves his hand, taking another drag, “it was actually three, thank you very much”.

“And it actually still doesn’t count. Do you know how many types of cancer you can get from those things? Do you want COPD? You’re gonna get COPD”. 

“COPD?” Richie asks, tilting his head, “oh! You mean Cock or Pussy Disorder. Well, sorry Eds but a gentleman never tells”. 

Eddie rolls his eyes so severely that Richie is sure he can see his brain, “no you fucking moron. COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease”.

“Chronic Obstrusa Whatta?”

“Chronic _Obstructive_ Pulmonary Disease,” Eddie says flatly, “or COPD for short. It’s an umbrella term for all sorts of nasty shit like emphysema or… or chronic bronchitis and fucking asthma. You want asthma? I have asthma, it’s not fun”.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about your pack a day habit in middle school my man, that’s my bad”.

“Richie”.

“Eddie”.

Eddie huffs, crossing his arms across his chest as he leans back in his chair like a disappointed father. Richie distracts himself with another puff. 

“You’re fucking impossible, you know that?” 

“Who? Lil’ ol’ me?” Richie bats his lashes, flicking the end of his cigarette into the ashtray next to him, giving Eddie a cheeky grin as he exhales a cloud of grey smoke. He sees Eddie fidget for a moment, and it takes him a second to recognize that particular gesture. He was itching for his inhaler. Which he didn’t have on him. Richie feels a pang of guilt for a moment but it quickly disappears when he remembers Eddie doesn’t fucking need it. Eddie seems to remember too because he’s leaning back in toward Richie to change the subject, chin in his hand as he eyes him pointedly. He looks like he wants to say something. Richie waits patiently. He’d wait for anything Eddie wanted him to. He’d wait a million fucking years like that dog on Futurama if Eddie told him to. 

“Gimmie one”. 

Richie blinks, the smoke nearly falling from his fingers as he stares, “huh?” 

“Gimmie a smoke,” Eddie repeats, doing a gimmie-gimmie gesture with his hand again, just like he had back in the kitchen for the sauce spoon. Richie’s mouth is dry. 

“I don’t– what?” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, and reaches across the table to grab the pack next to Richie’s plate, taking the lighter as well and opening up the box. He pulls one out, lets it hang at the corner of his lips for a moment as he seems to contemplate something before giving a slight nod of his head and cupping the lighter around the end, sparking it up and taking a long inhale. Richie feels a heat pool in his stomach when Eddie sputters, exhaling a grey cloud of smoke in a series of coughs, waving his hand in front of his face. Richie watches him stare at the cigarette for a long moment, his own limply gripped between his fingers before Eddie takes another pull, exhaling this one smoothly, without any trouble. 

The air stills around them, the sun beginning to dip behind the hills, the last light of the day petering out like an oil painting across the sky. And Eddie smokes a cigarette on Richie’s patio, a glass of champagne in his other hand. Richie takes a pull from his own, exhaling as he watches the blanket of stars begin to pull its way across the sky, trying to ignore the tug at his heartstrings everytime he hears Eddie push the smoke from his lungs.

Cher plays tauntingly over the speakers, her deep voice pooling in Richie’s ears, crooning over the passage of time as crickets chirp in the brush surrounding Richie’s yard. 

Eddie taps his foot. 

Richie’s heart pounds in his ears.

“I’m gonna go for a swim,” he says suddenly, putting out his cigarette in the ashtray and pushing his chair back as he stands, eyeing the pool for a moment before giving a nod of determination, pulling his glasses off. 

“A swim?” Eddie asks, taking the last drag of his smoke and putting it out as well, filling his glass up with more champagne. Richie does the same, drinking down a full glass with ease. 

“Yeah man, a swim,” Richie pulls off his crappy t-shirt and is happy for once with his shitty life choices, his old swim trunks still hanging off his hips. He toes off his flip flops, making his way to the side of the pool, “it’s when you get in the water and you swim in it”. 

“I– I know what swimming is you fucking dickwad,” Eddie huffs, and Richie hears him stand up. He turns to look at him as he continues, “you just ate. You’re gonna get cramps or something”.

“That’s an old wives tale, Eds,” Richie is all teeth as he grins up at him, laughing through his words. He’s almost sure he sees a blush creeping up Eddie’s neck but, the carpet is ripped from beneath his feet before he can make a joke about it when Eddie speaks up again.

“I’ll join you in a minute,” Eddie says, turning on his heel and making his way back inside, the patio door sliding shut without another word. Richie stands there blinking in the twilight as he wills his brain to make sense of what the fuck just happened. Instead, he gives up trying and makes his way to the deep end of the pool, falling backward into the water and sitting himself down at the bottom until he can’t hold his breath any longer and has to come back up for air. 

He’s floating around on his back when Eddie pulls the sliding glass door open and steps back out, two towels in his hands and a pair of black swim trunks the only thing on him. Richie tries his best not to look too obvious.

“What happened to getting cramps?” Richie says, swimming up to the side of the pool and pushing his hair out of his eyes, offering Eddie a lopsided grin as the other man places the towels down on the lounge chairs, turning to look at Richie. The thing about Eddie is that he doesn’t even need to roll his eyes for you to know he’s rolling his eyes at you. He just gives you a pointed look, those heavy brows hanging over his eyes as he looks at you as if you’re the stupidest piece of shit on earth. Richie could melt like butter under that gaze. 

“It’s an old wives tale,” Eddie repeats, sarcasm dripping off his tongue like venom, but there’s no heat behind his eyes, and Richie only beams brighter up at him. Eddie sits down on the side of the pool, dipping his toes into the shallow end first before slipping in, humming at the temperature of the water, content. 

“Careful, I peed over there,” Richie says, pushing off the side of the pool to float on his back again. He watches Eddie splash away from his spot in a show of disgust and Richie erupts into childish giggles. 

“You’re such a fucking dick, you dick!” Eddie squawks, and Richie only laughs harder, which in turn has Eddie chuckling quietly to himself, ducking his head to hide it. 

Alison Krauss pours through the speakers, and Richie croons along, floating around as he looks up at the stars, “ _Spent my life looking for that somebody, to make me feel like you. Now you tell me that you want to leave me. But darling, I just can't let you_ ”. Eddie is silent as he floats around next to him, both under the same stars. Both sharing the same space. Both breathing the same air. Richie is content to have this forever, if it was all he ever got to have, he was happy with that. He didn’t want for more, he wasn’t selfish right now. This was all he needed. 

Their fingers brush as if to punctuate the moment and Richie’s breath catches in his throat. Eddie doesn’t move his hand away, in fact he grabs it, pulling it out of the water. Richie looks over at him, their faces so close he can feel Eddie’s breath on his own, warm and sweet with the afterglow of champagne on his tongue. Eddie is looking up toward the sky, and Richie follows his hand as it’s pointed toward the stars. 

“That’s a planet,” Eddie says as easily as ever. Richie for a rare moment in his life, is speechless. “Do you know which one?” 

“Uh,” Richie clears his throat, staring up at the blurry sky above them, the stars practically double without his glasses. He shakes his head, “nah man, what planet is it?”

“Uranus,” Eddie says flatly. 

Richie, like the child he is, bursts out laughing. 

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s right here,” Richie says, pulling both their hands down to rest on his ass, Eddie pulls his hand away quickly and splashes Richie with a tidal wave of water. Richie can hear him laughing over the commotion, laughing harder himself. 

“You’re so fucking immature,” Eddie laughs, his tone no where near insulting. He says it like he enjoys it, like it’s something he looks forward to. Richie lets himself think, for just a moment, that Eddie likes his immaturity. His stupidity, his easy jokes. Richie lets himself believe it. And the universe doesn’t tell him no. 

They both float on in silence for a few more minutes, as long as they can bear until the early spring air begins to bite. With the stars twinkling above and the sun long gone, Richie and Eddie pull themselves out of the water and towel themselves off before heading inside with their dishes. Eddie excuses himself to get changed, and Richie busies himself putting the dishes in the dishwasher before making his way upstairs to do the same. 

He makes his way down the hall, opening up the door to his bedroom, stepping inside. He tugs off his swim trunks and peels off the briefs he’d forgotten about with a disgusted grunt, throwing them into his hamper. He tugs on a pair of boxers and a white t-shirt, eyeing himself in the mirror on the back of his door, adjusting his glasses before making his way out and back down the stairs. 

Eddie is sitting in the living room, curiously checking out Richie’s bong. This one is a much smaller piece, still beaker style but all clear glass instead of matte black. The bowl in it is larger than the usual he uses for it, simply because he’d had company earlier that morning. Fuck, that feels like a life time ago. Richie siddles up next to Eddie on the couch, pulling out a wooden box from the underside of the coffee table, flipping it open and fiddling around with all the shit inside it. 

“What’s that?” Eddie asks curiously. 

“My Weed Box… Trademark”. 

Eddie snorts, and Richie turns to him with a grin, “I know I said I wanted to but, aren’t we a little old for weed?”

“What? Fuck no, Edward. Anyone can smoke ganja. Besides,” Richie makes a pained expression as he slides a hand to the small of his back to prove his point, “I got a bad back my man”. 

“Bullshit”.

“True shit. Also, meth is hella fucking expensive”. 

Eddie blinks before erupting into a fit of laughter, throwing his head back as he does. Richie grins, admiring the dimples in his cheeks and the crinkles framing his eyes. He’d never, ever get tired of making Eddie laugh. Of hearing it bubble up and erupt until the other man was a wheezing mess by his side, swearing up down and sideways that Richie wasn’t funny at all in his next, full breath before breaking again and laughing until he had tears running down his cheeks. It was a bit of a rarity to get him to that point but, everytime he did Richie tucked it away to remember fondly. One of his greatest achievements was making Eddie piss himself laughing in seventh grade. He doesn’t even remember the joke, all he remembers is how hard Eddie laughed– how he hung off him and pushed at his shoulder with each word Richie said until eventually, he stopped and excused himself without another word. 

Richie didn’t find out until a week later that he pissed himself. Richie had never been prouder. 

“I’m gonna smoke,” Richie says after a moment of silence passes between them. Eddie makes a noise of intrigue next to him and Richie turns to meet his gaze. 

“You’re welcome to join me if you want,” Richie says, lopsided grin tugging at his lips as he watches Eddie look back at the box, reaching to pick up a vacuum sealed bag of deep green bud. “That’s an indica. It’ll help you sleep”.

“Huh? How?” 

Richie blinks, “uh… I dunno. That’s just what indicas do. Weed has health benefits. Pain relief, appetite stimulation, sleep aid… depression, anxiety…” Richie trails off, taking the strain from Eddie’s hand and opening up the bag. The aroma is pungent, filling the space between them as the Dixie Chicks rendition of Landslide plays sweetly around them. Richie offers Eddie the bag. 

“What’s it smell like?” he asks. 

Eddie scrunches up his nose, leaning away from the bag and giving Richie a pointed look, “weed,” he says simply. 

Richie snorts, shaking his head, “obviously! But what else?”

“Richie–”

“What else?” Richie says again, offering him the bag again. He doesn’t force him to smell it, and he’s a moment away from just taking it away when Eddie sighs and leans forward. He rests his hand on Richie’s wrist to steady his shaking hands, which only shake more with Eddie’s warm hands resting on him, and takes a deep inhale. 

Eddie wrinkles his nose again, about to pull away as he looks up at Richie, unimpressed. But, he takes another sniff and his brows knit together the way they do when Eddie is curious, or surprised. He takes the bag from Richie’s hand and leans back against the couch, taking a deeper inhale and raising a brow. Richie watches him with a smile, raising a brow of his own, “well?”

“Like… weed,” Eddie says before placing the bag back down on the table. Richie deflates, and Eddie’s expression breaks into a bright smile, a laugh bubbling up as he tosses an arm over the back of the sofa. Richie’s heart jumps into his mouth. “And… kinda citrusy?” 

Richie adjusts his glasses, sliding them back up his face with the back of his hand, nodding his head, “yeah! Like oranges or some shit. And kinda peppery?”

“Yeah…” Eddie says thoughtfully, “yeah, kinda”. 

“How about this one?” Richie asks, grabbing another baggy and peeling it open, taking an inhale himself before offering it to Eddie. 

“Blueberry,” Eddie says incredulously, taking another sniff and giving Richie a curious look.

Richie leans back with a shrug, throwing his arms up behind his head. Eddie reads the packet. 

“Blueberry Kush?” he asks with a laugh in the back of his throat. “And what’s this one?” he reaches for the first bag, reading the label. He whispers the name under his breath, “Purple Punch…”

“It makes me reaaaaal sleepy,” Richie says with a smirk, leaning back into the couch, eyeing Eddie as he reads over the label and tilts the packet over to drop a bud in his hand. Eddie eyes it like it’s dangerous, the icy bud in his hand sitting like a heavy rock. Richie smiles up at him when Eddie looks to him with a question in his eyes. 

“Why would you want that? I thought people smoked weed to have fun?” 

Richie shrugs, “there’s like millions of strains of weed. Each of them has their own little qualities. I have trouble sleeping so…” 

Eddie goes to say something else but cuts himself off before he can, the ghost of worry etched into the lines of his face. Richie huffs and sits up, plucking the bud from Eddie’s fingers and grabbing his grinder, breaking it up and putting the lid back on, grinding it down until it’s good enough to pack. 

Eddie watches, intrigued as Richie twists off the top and pushes his finger through the fine, freshly ground kush, pinching a bit between his fingers and packing it into the bowl of his bong. He feels Eddie’s eyes on him all the while, his hands shaking with the attention. The last time he’d packed a bowl in front of Eddie they must have been about 16. Back then he didn’t know what the fuck a strain was, he just knew that the kids down the street sold oregano and the old man two blocks away with tires in his yard had the good shit. He got the bong as a hand me down, by which he means he stole it from some dumbass kid who thought it would be a good idea to bring it to school. Richie misses that bong. 

“There. We. Go,” Richie says with a smile, clapping his hands together in success. “Offer is still on the table. Wanna join me?” 

Eddie seems to mull it over for a moment before he shakes his head slowly, eyeing the time on his watch. Richie catches the glimmer of Eddie’s wedding band, and he tries to ignore the pit in his stomach. 

“I gotta be up early tomorrow,” he says, the exhaustion on his face plain as day. Richie frowns, looking down at his phone for the date. 

“It’s Friday night man…” 

“I’m aware”.

“What do you need to be up early for on Saturday morning?” Richie asks, not buying it. “You can just say no dude, I’m not gonna judge”. 

Eddie sighs, standing up and stretching toward the ceiling, “work”. 

Richie frowns harder, sitting up and grabbing his lighter, “work. On Saturday morning?” 

“Yep”.

“Uh huh”.

Eddie is silent for a minute before looking down at Richie as he pulls, lighting the bowl and inhaling for a long moment before pulling off the stem and removing the bowl. He exhales a hearty cloud of white smoke, coughing heavily into the crook of his arm for a solid minute, tears in his eyes when he looks blearily back up at Eddie, who is hiding a laugh. 

“You’re really selling this,” he chuckles.

“It’s what I do”. Richie coughs again, sniffing before placing the bong down shakily and falling back against the couch, “fuck,” he breathes. 

“Tomorrow,” Eddie says after a moment, turning toward the stairs. Richie blinks before turning so quickly he’s sure it’s his soul that does first before his body makes to catch up. Fuck, he’s already stoned. 

“Huh?” Richie says, and it sounds worlds away. 

Eddie turns back to look at him from the first step, hand on the railing. Richie takes in his pj’s for the first time. A black tee and a pair of red and white briefs. Richie feels a familiar heat sink like a boulder into his stomach, mouth dry as a desert. 

“I’ll smoke with you tomorrow night. Roll us a joint or two”. 

With that, Eddie makes his way back upstairs, and Richie watches him the whole way, not daring to turn around until he hears the door shut softly. 

Richie falls back against the couch, looking up at the ceiling as the world spins around him. He closes his eyes, Eddie’s face all he sees behind the lids of his eyes. His smile, the way his shoulders shake when he laughs, his hair wet with pool water despite just having a shower, all because he wanted to go swimming with Richie. 

His little dimples, the way his smile started lopsided when it was truly genuine, growing into bright, white teeth and crinkled eyes. Richie’s breath catches in his throat, the house silent save for the sound of Stevie Nicks playing the night to a close, singing alongside Don Henley over the melodic drawl of acoustic guitar. 

_You in the moonlight_  
With your sleepy eyes  
Could you ever love a man like me? 

Richie looks up at the beams of pale wood making up the open ceiling, the lights that twinkle warm white in the rafters like the stars Eddie pointed their attention to in the pool. He breathes in deep, runs his hands down his face.

“Fuck”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if there are any errors in here i am so sorry i am incredibly inebriated but i wanted to post this now so i didn't forget later lol i hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter @uglybeetroot and @ugliestbeetroot !!


End file.
